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Greek Font Society 33 Sp. Merkouri Str. 116 34 Athens Greece T: +30 210 725 1979 F: +30 210 725 1979 E: gfs[at]greekfontsociety.gr
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Greek Letters: From Tablets to Pixels [1996] Elements of Typographic Style [2001] Pindar's Olympian Odes [2004] |
| PREFACE Michael V. Sakellariou On the occasion of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, the Greek Font Society presents a multi-lingual commemorative edition of Pindar's fourteen Olympian Odes. Pindar, one of the greatest classical Greek poets, composed, among his other works, odes in honor of the victors of the four panhellenic athletic contests of his times, namely the Olympic, the Pythic, the Isthmic and the Nemean games. The Olympian Odes are presented in the original ancient Greek text and in seven translations: English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish, as well as in Modern Greek, the language of the host country. These languages were chosen because, apart from being international, they have also been used by distinguished Pindarists, and most translations of the Olympic, Pythic, Isthmic and Nemean Odes are written in them. Modern Greek has evolved from ancient Greek-more precisely from the Attic dialect-and has come to us through the Hellenistic demotic and the Byzantine vernacular. This commemorative edition consists of a case which contains seven volumes, one for each translation. Each volume includes the classical Greek text, an Introduction to Pindar's poetic oeuvre, written especially by William H. Race, and a Typographic Perspective prepared by George D. Matthiopoulos. The Classical Greek text is from William H. Race's edition in the Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1997. The translations are by William H. Race for English, Jean-Paul Savignac for French, Franz Dornseiff for German, Luigi Lehnus for Italian, Mikhail Gasparov for Russian, and Emilio Suarez de la Torre for Spanish. The Modern Greek translation is the unpublished work of the late Ioannis Economides, edited by Daniel Iacov. Since its foundation in 1992, the Greek Font Society has been researching the history of Greek typography and designing digital Greek typefaces. In this edition, we present some of the most celebrated Greek typefaces which have been designed since the 15th century. For this purpose, the Classical Greek text is set in a different historical font in each volume. Thus, we use the Wilson Greek in the English volume, Les Grecs du Roy in the French, Palatino Greek in the German, GFS Bodoni Classical Greek in the Italian, GFS Porson Greek in the Russian and GFS Complutensian Greek in the Spanish. For the Greek volume we use the GFS Callierges Greek font for the Classical Greek text. In addition, we introduce for the first time the new digital family of typefaces Athens Academy Greek for the Modern Greek and Athens Academy Cyrillic for the Russian translation. The present edition has a limited print run of 1000 copies, and is not for sale. A presentation case containing the seven volumes will be offered as a commemorative gift to the International Olympic Committee, to the Greek Olympic Association and to every National Olympic Association that participates in the Games in 2004. A presentation case will also be given as a gift to Athens 2004 organisers, to the Ministry of Culture, to the mayor of Athens, to dignitaries invited by the Greek Government and to major University Libraries in Greece and abroad with departments in Classical Studies, as well as to Libraries, Museums and Institutes of Typography. The inspiration behind this great edition was the late MIchael S. Macrakis, founder and Vice President of GFS. His motivation and commitment gave the impetus to this project. Before his date in October 2001, he had succeded in contacting and involving most of the contributors and in securing finance through sponsorship by the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation. The publishers and the individuals who gave us permissions to publish their work, the organisations and the designers who kindly offered their typefaces and all the collaborators on this project are mentioned in detail in the following Acknowledgments section. On behalf of the Greek Font Society's Board of Directors, I extend to all my heartfelt gratitude. It has been an honor that so many distinguished scholars and experts have responded enthusiastically to our initiative and have contributed greatly to its success. |
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| TYPOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE George D. Matthiopoulos Typography, as a process, redefined the book as the first industrial product, and in turn the book, as a mass cultural tool, has become the midwife of modernity. Indeed, Johannes Gutenberg's invention made knowledge accessible to broad sections of the population, first in Europe and then in the whole world. The term typography, in this context, includes punch-cutting, matrix-punching, typecasting, typesetting, pagination and printing in multiple copies. The intellectual thirst which had gripped Italy and the rest of Europe during the Renaissance in learning everything about the Graeco-Roman civilisation of the past led to the need to read the Greek classics in the original. Inevitably, Greek typography appeared and was inextricably connected with classical studies in European centres of learning. The ancient Greek alphabet had evolved during the millennium of the Byzantine era from majuscule to minuscule form. Gradually, the Byzantine hand had incorporated an array of ligatures, abbreviations, flourishes and other decorative nuances which defined its extravagant cursive character. Until the late 15th century, typographers in Italy who had to deal with Greek text avoided emulating this complicated hand. Instead, they would cut and cast the twenty-four letters of the alphabet separately and subsequently typeset and Greek passage with these. An example, albeit of a somewhat later period, was the famous type used to typeset the New Testament in the so-called Complutensian Bible (1512), edited by the Greek scholar, Demetrios Doukas. The type was cut by Arnaldo Guillen de Brocar on commission by the cardinal Fransisco Ximenez, in the University of Alcala, Spain. It is one of the best and most representative models of this early tradition in Greek typography, and for this reason it was selected and revived as a digital font by GFS for the typesetting of the Greek text of the Olympian Odes in the Spanish volume of this edition. During the last decade of the 15th century we can record the first efforts to introduce the cursive Byzantine hand in typography. The principal exponent of this idea was the resilient publisher, printer and scholar Aldus Manutius, in Venice. His inspired and Herculean goal to publish the definitive edition (editio princeps) of all the Greek classical texts was, in time, very successful and made his name renowned throughout Europe. His books, using new types following the Byzantine hand, became the model for the next generation of publishers and typecutters, as well as the public. At the same period of Aldus' activities, one of his collaborators, the excellent scribe and printer Zacharias Callierges and his associate, the rich merchant Nicolaus Blastos, set out to publish a new Greek lexicon. The resultant volume, Etymologicum Magnum (1499), was made only by Greeks, thus becoming the first ever, all-Greek edition. Callierges-accirding to the commendatory poem by Markos Musurus, which was included in that edition- was a charismatic personality and, most scholars agree, responsible for the typecutting and casting of the new font he introduced. The type follows, too, the Byzantine hand and is universally considered one of the most handsome of the period. In honour of Callierges, this remarkable renaissance man, his type was selected and revived as a digital font by GFS for the typesetting of the ancient Greek text of the Olympian Odes in the Greek volume of this edition. In the 16th century, the university of Sorbonne in Paris, under the patronage of Francis I, started a major programme for the advancement of Classical studies. Its driving force was an indefatigable scholar-printer, Robert Estienne. He was working with Claude Garamont, the greatest of French punchcutters. Garamont was already an accomplished master when Francis I invited the famous Cretan scribe Angelos Vergikios to consult with Garamont on the cutting of a new Greek type to be used in Estienne's publishing plans. The outcome of these two gifted artists was the most beautiful cursive Greek type of all times, known as Grecs du Roi, the punches and matrices of which survive to this day. Frank Jalleau, type designer of the Impremerie Nationale de France, has revived this extraordinary and famous typeface digitally and GFS has used it to typeset the Greek text of the Olympian Odes in the French volume of this edition. The unparalleled success of Grecs du Roi marked indelibly-though some claimed it stunted-the development of Greek type for the next two centuries. The monopoly of its use by the Impremerie Royale de France, however, led other publishers to order copies of this style. Particularly innovative in their copying were the punch cutters Robert Granjon, Guillaume Le Be and Pierre Haultin, who were often commissioned by the publishers Christophe Plantin and Luis Elsevir, in the Low Countries. When, in the 17th century, the universities in Cambridge and Oxford took up the challenge to develop their own Classical studies programme, they had to travel to Holland to buy matrices before English engravers gradually tried their hand at it. Soon, however, other more powerful socioeconomic forces defined the outlook of this nation, and eventually, Europe. The industrial revolution and the age of reason introduced a mechanical precision and frugal utilitarianism which appealed to their practical mind. Soon, typecutters and typesetters of Greek texts started to abandon the scores of complicated and time consuming ligatures and alternative sorts in favour of the basic letters. The watershed, perhaps, of this growing practice was another famous Greek type cut by an able and practical Scott, Alexander Wilson for the Foulis brothers, publishers of Glascow University. It was first used in typesetting of an edition of Homer (1756). This seminal type was revived as a digital font by Matthew Carter in Boston and was used by GFS to typeset the Greek text of the Olympian Odes in the English volume of this edition. By the turn of the 18th century the simplification of the Greek typecase was, more or less, complete throughout Western Europe and with it, the last ties with the Byzantine past were irrevocably severed. Apart from the two forms of lower case sigma–one for the beginning or the middle of a word, the other as finial–which have remained in Modern Greek and the alternative sorts for beta, theta, pi, tau and phi–which were used for another century or so–every other ligature or abbreviation was abolished. In Italy, at the same period, the prolific typecutter, printer and publisher Giambattista Bodoni designed several Greek typefaces and published many Greek editions in Parma. One of his most exquisite typefaces, used in the edition of Longus (1781), was selected and revived as a digital font by GFS for the typesetting of the Greek text of the Olympian Odes in the Italian volume of this edition. In England, during the 1790's, Cambridge University Press decided to produce a new set of Greek types. The engraver Richard Austin was commissioned to produce a type based on the beautiful handwriting of the university's great scholar of Classic, Richard Porson. The type was completed in 1809, after the untimely death of Porson the previous year. Its success was immediate and since then the classical edition in Great Britain and the U.S. use it, almost invariably. This typeface was selected and revived as a digital font by GFS for the typesetting of the Greek text of the Olympian Odes in the Russian volume of this edition. Russia was a latecomer into the industrial age and its programme of Classical studies was mostly developed in the 20th century, and thus never producing its own Greek typographical apparatus. In France, despite the upheaval of the Revolution, another legendary publisher and typecutter, Firmin Didot produced his version of Greek type, which was used in many Greek editions. This type was also used for the Greek newspaper, Ephemeris tis Kyverniseos, (Journal of the [Greek] Government) during the Greek National Revolution against the Ottoman Empire, in 1821. It was a gift of the French Committee for the support of the Greek Revolution, along with a fully equipped field-press, and it was brought to Greece by Firmin Didot's grandson, Ambroise Firmin Didot. Since then, the type became the most popular choice for book publishing in Greece until the late 1980's, withstanding unscathed the constraints of mechanical monotype setting and, later, phototypesetting. During the 19th century there were several attempts to introduce new Greek typefaces, especially in England. Yet, none lasted long, save a Greek type which was used in Leipzig, Germany by the publisher B.G. Teubner, in the 1850's. This type was eventually brought to Greece where it was used extensively as an italic face until the last decades of the 20th century. In the late 1920's Oxford University Press introduced another Greek typeface, called New Hellenic, designed by Victor Scholderer, an eminent book historian of the British Museum. It was, effectively, a revival of the early Italian attempts in Greek type, discussed earlier. His type, however, was the first after Porson Greek to be a success in England and it has been used, since, in many Classical editions. After the end of World War II, Hermann Zapf, the most gifted calligrapher and type designer of his generation, has designed several Greek types. Recently, Microsoft Inc. has included one of his designs in the digital Palatino type family. In honour of the the great typographical achievements of the great German artist and philhellene, Palatino Greek was selected by GFS for the typesetting of the Greek text of the Olympian Odes in the German volume of this edition. Finally, in 1998, Athens Academy commissioned the Greek Font Society to design a new family of typefaces, to include a full polytonic Greek typeface, a complete Latin typecase, the Cyrillic and Coptic alphabet and the International Phonetic Association's alphabet for the use in the on-going project of the Lexicon of the Greek Language. This new type family is presented publicly for the first time here, in the Modern Greek and in the Russian translation on the Greek and Russian volumes, respectively. As it is illustrated in the commemorative edition of Pindar's Olympian Odes, Greek typography, in one form or another, has existed for more than half a millennium disseminating the Greek Classics in every nation of the world. Indeed, the treasures of Greek thought and Greek civilisation, undivided as they stand in their maternal language, will forever continue to enlighten the universal human nous. |
